How To Make Fresh Tomato Sauce

An award - winning author, popular lecturer, restaurant consultant, and educator, Amy Riolo is known for fusing the worlds of culture, cuisine, and history. Amy makes frequent appearances on numerous television and radio programs both in the United States and abroad including Fox TV, CBS, Montgomery and Fairfax County TV, Nile TV, The Travel Channel, Martha Stewart Living Radio, WHYY, Abu Dhabi Television, and many others totaling a reach of over 223,194,389 people. Amy also develops and hosts a weekly news video program entitled “Culture of Cuisine” which airs on twenty-eight nationally syndicated channels and has developed hundreds of videos for corporate clients.
Amy’s clients include Harris Teeter, Stevia, US Endocrine Society, US Apple Association, The National Association of Sauces and Condiments, and many others. Her work has also appeared in the USA Today, Cooking Light Magazine, The Washington Post, CNN.com, The Wall Street Journal, Gulf News, Cornell Alumni Magazine, Popular Anthropology Magazine, The National, and Egyptian newspapers and hundreds of blogs. She is also the author of a popular blog called Dining with Diplomats (www.diningwithdiplomats.blogspot.com) which has been the inspiration for a Travel Channel television series.
A successful restaurant consultant and graduate of Cornell University, Amy enjoys developing concepts, menus, action plans, recipes, training seminars and guides, and themes for corporations, restaurants, and hotels. She has consulted international business owners on bakeries, cafes, restaurants and stores. She was recently awarded Montgomery College’s Milton F. Clogg Award for Outstanding Alumni Achievement in the Culinary Arts.
Amy’s popular lectures range in topics and include everything from improving profitability in the restaurant industry to international business and dining etiquette to international cuisine and culture. She has been an invited guest speaker for The Library of Congress, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, National Geographic, The Smithsonian Institution, The Fulbright Commission, The National Museum of African Art, The Walters Art Museum, The Kennedy Center, and many other embassies, museums, and organizations.
Amy’s first book, Arabian Delights; Recipes & Princely Entertaining Ideas from the Arabian Peninsula was chosen as one of the “16 Volumes Worth Staining” by the Washington Post (Capital Books, 2007). Her second book Nile Style; Egyptian Cuisine and Culture (Hippocrene Books) won the World Gourmand Award for "Best Arab Cuisine Book" in the United States in 2009 and is now being printed in a second edition. Her most recent book, The Mediterranean Diabetes Cookbook, (American Diabetes Association) was released in March 2010 and has won the 2011 Nautilus Book Award.
Amy is a member of The International Association of Culinary Professionals, Culinary Historians of Washington, Les Dames d’Escoffier (Global Culinary Initiative), Culinary Historians of Washington, and Slow Food DC. Amy is based in the Washington DC, area and leads culinary tours to both the Mediterranean and Middle East.

How To Make Spicy Pumpkin & Black Eyed Pea Stew

International Chef Amy Riolo demonstrates how to make a spicy pumpkin stew with black eyed peas.

Amy Riolo: My black-eyed pee stew with spicy pumpkin is a great African inspired dish that the whole family will love.

To get started, let's turn our pan on to medium high and then we're going to be using about a quarter cup of peanut oil. We're just going to heat that and then I'll go ahead and add my onions and next I'll do my carrot and then I'm going to add in my red bell pepper.

So next I'm going to start adding in my herbs and spices and I've got some thyme here. Next, I'll add in my paprika and now I'm going to add in the garam masala. Now I've got my garlic and I'm just going to mix everything together. So now I'll add my salt and a little bit of pepper. I'm going to let my vegetable saut for about five minutes just until they are a little bit tender.

So now it's time to go ahead and add out black-eyed peas. You just want to stir everything around and get it incorporated. Now I'm going to turn my heat down to low at this point and now I'll add in my vegetable stock and the last thing is to add a little bit of tobasco sauce. Now I'm going to turn my heat up to high. As soon as it boils we'll turn it back down to low, cover it and then let it simmer for 15 minutes.

While our black-eyed peas to a simmering, we can go ahead and start making our spicy pumpkin. The first thing that we're going to do is to melt our butter. Once the butter coats the bottom of the pan, we can go ahead and add in our pumpkin and I'm just going to stir it and get it nice and coated with the butter.

And then next we'll add in our onions, the next our tomatoes. Then I'm going to add in the garlic and my garam masala spice mixture. So now my mixture is coming up to a boil, we're going to cover it and let it simmer about 15-20 minutes and last we're going to add a half of a cup of water and since it's already boiling I'm just going to lower my heat to low and then I'm going to cover it and let it simmer for about 15 minutes.

There we have our black-eyed pea stew with spicy pumpkin, an African-American favorite that makes eating healthy and fun.